The law and the rule now to be considered will carry us into
realms of real abstraction; it will not be easy for you to understand much of what I may
say. This Law VIII takes us back to the very source of all phenomena as far as the human
being is concerned - the will of the immortal soul to incarnate on earth or to withdraw
from incarnation. It involves also the consideration of the factor of the Will in
producing disease as the direct means of bringing about that withdrawal. So little is as
yet understood anent the Will that it is particularly hard to explain.

Law VIIIDisease and death are the result of two active forces. One is the will of the
soul, which says to its instrument: "I draw the essence back." The other is the
magnetic power of the planetary life, which says to the life within the atomic structure:
"The hour of reabsorption has arrived. Return to me." Thus, under cyclic law, do
all forms act.

Two aspects in the nature of the divine Will are called into play where disease and
death are concerned: one is the will of the soul to bring an incarnation to an end;
another is the will of the spirit of the earth (the basic elemental force) to draw back
into itself the released and temporarily isolated substance of which the soul had availed
itself during the cycle of incarnation.

The factor of time, the factor of the interplay between the point of will which is that
of the soul, and the diffused ever present will of the elemental spirit of substance are
involved, plus their cyclic relation. These we shall attempt to consider. [634]

What I have
here to say is of major importance and will throw a new and strange light upon the entire
subject of disease. I will deal, first of all, with the second half of the law, which
refers to the "magnetic power of the planetary life," which says to the life
within the atomic structure: "The hour of reabsorption has arrived. Return to
me."

To understand the reference, I would remind you that a human being is a spiritual
entity, occupying or informing (which is the occult word I prefer) a dense physical
vehicle. This dense physical body is part of the general structure of the entire planet,
composed of living atoms which are under the control of, and are part of the life of the
planetary entity. This dense physical vehicle is released into a temporary and directed
freedom by the will of the informing soul, but remains at the same time an intrinsic part
of the sumtotal of all atomic substance. This physical vehicle - having its own life and
having a measure of intelligence which we call its instinctual nature - is called by
esotericists the physical elemental. During incarnated life, it is the coherent force or
agency by means of which the physical body preserves its particular form, under the impact
of etheric livingness; this affects all the living atoms and brings them into relation
with each other. The physical body is the great symbol (within the one Life) of the many
of which it is constituted; it is the demonstrated fact of innate coherency, of unity, of
synthesis and of relationship. Physical or planetary prana (the lowest form of pranic
energy) is the life of the sumtotal of the atoms (of which all outer forms are composed)
as they are brought into relation to the separated atomic structure of the dense physical
body of an individual informing soul in any kingdom of nature - particularly, from our
point of study, the human kingdom.

What is true in this connection of the individual or of [635] man, the microcosm, is
true also of the planet, which - like man - is a coherent whole. This wholeness is due to
the relation of two aspects of life: the life of the planetary Logos and the life of the
spirit of the earth, which is the life of the sumtotal of all the atoms which compose all
forms. To this sumtotal of living substance, of elemental life, man's dense physical body
conforms and is therefore the symbol. These two lives, functioning microcosmically and
also macrocosmically, create that living pranic energy which circulates throughout the
etheric bodies of all forms, which produces coherency or a synthetic holding-together and
which can be discerned when the densest aspect of the etheric body is seen, creating thus
the health aura in plants, trees, sea life, animals and man. Other energies and potencies
circulate through and condition the etheric vehicle, but I refer here only to the lowest
physical aspect. This is indicative of the life of the elemental of our planet, the spirit
of the earth - a divine life, making its own progress upon the involutionary arc of
manifestation.

This spirit
of the earth preserves its hold upon the atomic structures of which all forms are made,
including the physical body of man; it gathers them together again eventually and
reabsorbs those elements of its life which were temporarily isolated from it during any
incarnated experience of any soul in any of the kingdoms in nature. These atoms, it must
be noted, are imbued or conditioned by two factors for which the spirit of the earth is
solely responsible:

The factor of the Karma of the life of the elemental of the planet. This is an
involutionary, precipitating karma, entirely different to that of the planetary Logos, Who
is a spiritual Life upon the evolutionary arc. This involutionary karma, therefore,
conditions the life [636] experience from the purely physical angle of all forms
composed of atomic substance.

The factor of limitation. Apart from the karma, resulting in physical events, affecting
all physical forms composed of this elemental essence, the physical vehicles of all lives
in all the kingdoms of nature are also conditioned by the point in time of the cyclic
influence of the planetary spirit and by its point in evolution. This involutionary spirit
has not yet attained a point of perfection, but is progressing towards a specific goal
which will be attained when the evolutionary arc of experience is reached. This lies very
far ahead. Our planetary Logos, that great divine Life in Whom we live and move and have
our being, is one of the "imperfect Gods" as yet, from the point of view of the
goal set before all planetary Logoi. His body of expression, our planet, the Earth, is not
yet a sacred planet. The spirit of the earth is yet very far from even the relative
perfection of which a conscious human being is aware.